Hi Jacob,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 4: I have an interest I’m actively pursuing, voluntarily devoting more than 3 hours of “free time” each week .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were self-direction, achievement, and stimulation.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was openness.
You said your top three talents were social, analytic, and artistic / spatial.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you had a general intuition (but nothing specific yet) about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to marathon .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Run 10 miles .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said Finish distance under 90 minutes .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said Going out too much .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When i wake up Friday I’ll run ten miles in my goal time .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in Film .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt Motivated when receiving critical feedback, and Motivated when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling none of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being phillies .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Work .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to Coach .
In one word, you said it made you feel Relieved .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
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Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
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| "Die on the treadmill" |
| Grit and happiness is a virtuous cycle |
| I was used as the Will Smith example when Dr. Duckworth said to the class "Jacob YOU are special and will do great things!" Thank you Dr. Duckworth |
| Goal fusion is a fascinating concept and I'm going to go tell my parents about it! |
| Crossing the rubicon |
| Sushi in the flow |
| Advice is more effective than feedback |
| Stress may be good |
| Don't will my way through things. I make this mistake a LOT |
| We need to be demanding and supportive |
| A man with meaning can fight through any hardship |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
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| Sophia Feldman |
|
I'm really grateful to have gotten to know Jacob this semester. One thing I really appreciate about him is how he consistently brings positivity to our team discussions, creating a positive atmosphere for everyone. His skill at facilitating discussions and fostering a deeper connection among the team is something I value a lot. It's been interesting discovering his artistic side and learning about his diverse interests, from finance to filmmaking. I also enjoyed hearing about his new habit of reading the news every morning; it's inspired me to stay more informed too.
I was genuinely impressed by Jacob's Discovery project. His determination to finish the Philly Marathon despite a knee injury was pretty amazing. It was inspiring to see how he pushed through challenges to not only complete the project but also take on the race. I also liked how he picked up knowledge about nutrition along the way; it got me thinking about the possibility of running in a race someday. Jacob's journey taught me a lot about perseverance, and I appreciate the motivation his project gave me. |
| Amina Marwan |
| What I appreciate most about Jacob is his willingness to adjust and not get demotivated by setbacks! For his Discovery Project, I was really impressed by how he restructured everything around his knee injury and rather than giving up and being deterred by his injury, Jacob ended up completing his marathon. During his presentation, Jacob emphasized the importance of goal setting and talking with experts and this is something that he mentioned a lot during the semester. I also appreciated how attentive he is, and the follow up questions that he always asked about things that were mentioned in prior weeks. |
| Shi Ng |
| Hey Jacob,
Great meeting you mate, stroke of luck to be in 3 different classes with you until I dropped game theory :). Also best of luck for that atrocity. It's been great seeing your journey to your first marathon, I'm really impressed that you went through with it having not fully recovered. And in a very respectable time too, my first was much slower. I'm sure you'll be racing again in no time and can't wait to see where your running journey brings you.
It was wonderful seeing your successful presentation after many setbacks. I enjoyed your thought evolution from hating running to starting your running addiction. I still remember seeing you at the finishing line and you were pumped, glad you were able to experience the best feeling ever- runner's high!! Keep running mate, and definitely keep in touch, door is always open if you're ever in Australia.
Cheers,
Shi Ren |
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.